Enough
by Coffee and War
Summary: It's not love, but it's enough. The start of my shameless 002x004 kick. Spoilers for the end of the original ending.


Written on **December 20th, 2010**.

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_001_

It's not love.

It's something inane, irrational, incomprehensible. It's the sinking feeling when you hear in your mind the sound of dwindling fuel and the piercing sound of smelting metal and that imaginary, thundering crash. You've been holding your breath, and the moment she cries, you wish for a second you don't know exactly what that means. You want to deny; you want the inane, the irrational—

For a while it's too bright and too dark all at once, as if your circuits have crossed briefly. For a moment it seems as if a thousand years have passed and your mechanical joints have all rusted in that infinite instant and your heart has slowly turned from alloy to stone. You've sunk into the bottom of the ocean and become nothing more than a relic of a bygone era, sentry to endless schools of curious fish.

Your hand clenches her shoulder harder than it needs to as she repeats the wrong name over and over. As if she's leaving to you the right one—waiting for you to call it out, just so you can hear it for yourself. Which name is that? Why do you want to hear it? It's not necessary, is it? After all, he has no name. Just a number, just like you.

And so you're not upset; you're not angry; you're not malfunctioning. You don't feel anything at all, but that's only natural. After all: you're wrought of iron, steel and a hollow tin heart.

_002_

It's not love.

It's frustrating, it's futile, it makes you furious. You don't know why you try, you don't know why it matters. Why you should need—no, why you should _want—_something so absurd.

_Trust me. _He responds with a bitter, wry smile but doesn't pull away. Humouring you. _Please_, you roll your eyes but he knows you're pleading. _No_, his expression says without a word. Those damned eyes, always too intense, always too focused. Those eyes that only narrow and flicker when you retort with a confident smirk, _It's a challenge_.

Those eyes that snap shut as he exhales and tenses for a moment before relaxing as you lean in, making you feel laughably vulnerable when you should feel victorious. You've won the challenge, after all.

He makes you remember her, vividly: _Hilda, Hilda, Hilda. I love you. I love you so much. _No, not because he's anything like her—God forbid that ludicrous thought—he's nothing like her at all. She was patient and tolerant, endlessly forgiving. He had no reason and was frustratingly ill-tempered; never level-headed, never sensible. His overpowering, unwavering will suffocated you and made you miss her quiet warmth, never too hot but never cold. She was a beacon; a lighthouse in a sheltered cove. She was safety: a pocket of infinite strength in the stormy sea.

He was the storm and he was the calm; the infuriating, unpredictable force of nature. He was a paradox: as thoughtless as was kind, unbelievably obvious about his loneliness even though he hid behind a mask of childish independence. Despite his efforts, he had a painful sincerity you couldn't help but be attracted to. A passion and a determination you couldn't ever understand. He was always, _always_ out of your control. He was like a fire that wouldn't burn dry—shouldn't have burned dry. He's the fire that consumed you and spit you out and left you smouldering with an irritating feeling of uncharacteristic impulsiveness.

He filled you with guilt and regret and need; a twisting feeling in your stomach and a tightness in your chest. He made you remember the immeasurable pain, brought back by the vividness of her death and her beautiful life. He took that echoing numbness and turned it into a slow, bubbling feeling of of anger fuelled by sorrow and the strange desire for forgiveness; you wanted her to forgive you because you wanted the unforgivable. To move on and dishonour her memory, to look at the sky instead of her grave.

To want to look at that sky that was undeniably his and never, ever look away.

He made you feel human again—no. Human like you've always been. Filled with fault and doubt and wretchedness: like she loved you for. Human with a hollow tin heart, pulsing and bursting with warm blood.

_003_

It wasn't settling, it wasn't like that—for some reason you respected him more than that. His puzzling, bizarre strength you reached for even though you knew you would never be able to hold on to. That same strength you waited for and relied on in the heat of battle; that sound you listened for as you fell. That searing sound of dual flight engines turning oil into sheer power as you waited to be lifted up, up and away by the odd feeling of calm security.

You don't want to remember, but you do: that will, that fire, that impossible confidence on and off the battlefield, that contagious feeling of exhilaration when he laughed and dragged you higher and higher and higher until you felt the pressure in your torso change and your chestplate begin to bend and compress and the gears in your lungs tense against each other—

It wasn't love: You asked for his trust and instead he gave you the sky, but that was enough.


End file.
